Down the aisle
Big milestone for burn survivor as he fights to regain mobility
Vance Easter started something last year that most wouldn’t have thought possible just a few years ago. He started jogging. While he might not be setting any speed records, it still ranks as a major accomplishment for a man who sustained life-threatening burns five years ago today – Sept. 24, 2011. Easter was working on agriculture equipment in his Western Welding shop when, in an instant, tragedy struck.
“I was cutting steel and a spark had hit and bounced back and it burned through the two lines – oxyacetylene and propane line – and it was just like a flame-thrower. “I was crouched down and I was burned third degree from the top of the work boots to just under the armpits, all third-degree, and the arms, too.”
Incredibly, he had the discipline to shut off the valve from the tanks before seeking relief from the garden hose at his deck. “I was taught by my welding instructor: it doesn’t matter what happens, you shut the power source off and then you look after yourself. If you can’t, you try to get help.” His daughter, Jewel, saw him making his way toward the house and she went out and sprayed him down. Two passersby, Austie O’Meara and Glen Campbell saw him in flames heading for the house. They found him in a chair on the step, threw him down and rolled him on the grass. He spent four days short of a year on the Halifax burn unit, enduring surgeries, kidney failure, skin grafts, two heart attacks and two strokes, and a further six months of rehab in Charlottetown. His only time home over that period was a 36-hour Christmas pass in 2012. There were suggestions he’d never walk again and even talk of amputations.
Asked if taking the first steps in Charlottetown was scary, he responds, “No, it’s better than sitting in a wheelchair. “You’ve got to push yourself.” He turned aside a wheelchair for a walker, progressed to crutches, to walking and jogging and, earlier this month he walked his daughter down the aisle at her wedding. “Adam and I had a perfect dad. And one blessing that made our day so perfect was to have dad there to walk me down the aisle,” Jewel. Wedding guests were moved to tears when he glided across the floor with her for the fatherdaughter dance.
“Dancing is good therapy,” he said, lifting himself out of his chair to show off some dance moves while explaining the benefits of exercising the joints.
Earlier in the summer, he noticed his vision improving significantly, something he credits to the bopping of his head while jogging and the ear pressure he experienced while flying to and from Winnipeg for a burn survivors conference. No one can explain why the vision improved, but his wife, June, says there are several theories. He thinks it has to do with a nerve between his eye and his ear and he is hopeful that improvement will continue to the point that he will be able to get his driver’s license restored. But sight improvement ranks second to the 59-yearold welder. Top spot goes to his role in the September wedding of Jewel Easter and Adam MacLennan. “You don’t know how much I wanted to take that girl down the aisle.” He gets emotional as he states, “She’d be married two or three years ago, but she waited for her Dad.”
Five years after his accident, his progress still shows no signs of plateauing, and Easter said he’s surprising his medical professionals
“All they tell me is, whatever I’m doing, keep doing it.
“You’ve got to believe.” Once he can extend motion in his right elbow a little more so that he can feed himself with the right hand, he will undergo surgery to free the tendons in his left hand. His own stubbornness and sense of humour also play into it he admits.
“I’ve been pushing everything right to the limit.”